


The Drowning Box (and other stories)

by whichstiel



Series: Season 14 Codas [9]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bunkers, Damaged Goods, Dreams, Episode Tag, Episode: s14e11 Damaged Goods, Kid Fic, M/M, Whales, episode coda, spn 14x11
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-26
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-10-16 12:06:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17549393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whichstiel/pseuds/whichstiel
Summary: A future story, riffing off of the events of season 14, episode 11 "damaged goods."Castiel reads a child's story about Dean's imprisonment in the box. It's...canon divergent, to say the least.





	The Drowning Box (and other stories)

“Hey!” Leshawna’s high, clear voice pulled Castiel up short and he halted in the middle of the bunker’s library. It was a little before the dinner hour on a gorgeous summer afternoon, and few hunters occupied the common rooms. 

Turning a kind smile on their youngest resident, Castiel hooked his thumbs against the pockets of his coat and rocked forward slightly on his heels. The little girl, daughter of two of their resident hunters, was settled at the library’s wide wooden table in a sea of papers and brightly colored markers.“Yes?”

Leshawna pushed a sheaf across the scarred wooden table. It was lined paper, ripped from a spiral notebook and stacked. Yellow yarn loops between the holes in the margin were tied off into three tidy knots. Castiel picked it up and raised his brows at it, before looking back at the young girl drilling her heels against her chair in excitement. “This looks like a book?”

“Yup.” She grinned a kilowat and shot a confident finger in his direction - a perfect mimic of her hunter mother. “I made it for you! And Dean.”

Castiel’s eyes widened in genuine interest. He gingerly held the book in one hand as, with the other, he pulled out a chair and settled down next to Leshawna. “So,” he began. “What’s this about?”

“Daring adventures!” Leshawna waggled her fingers dramatically and lowered her voice into a register that could only be described as _spooooky_. “Scary monsters.” She watched Castiel expectantly. “Go on,” she prompted. “Read it!”

Castiel smiled at the cover. There was a rudimentary devil’s trap scrawled on the page - roughly drawn but technically correct enough to trap a demon. Around the devil’s trap the title read, _The Drowning Box and Other Stories_. “Oh,” Castiel said. He’d been expecting… Well. What had he been expecting? Unicorns, perhaps? He could have sworn Leshawna was obsessed with unicorns. “I was expecting unicorns,” he told her.

The little girl wrinkled her nose dismissively. “Boooring,” she declared. 

“Oh, I don’t know. I hear they—” Castiel cleared his throat at Leshawna’s glare and opened the book with overplayed haste. 

_Once upon a time_ , the first page read, _there lived a man who fought monsters._ The accompanying drawing was of a man standing in a wide stance, arms sprouting weapons. A scribble of yellow for hair and two green circles made Castiel smile. “Is this Dean?” _He would appreciate having three knives instead of a hand,_ Castiel thought. 

Leshawna nodded impatiently. “Read it out loud,” she prompted and Castiel obliged.

_“_ He was good at fighting monsters. He killed a lot of them.” The next page showed the same proud figure, but this time the weapons dripped with red. Pools of crimson were scribbled in hasty, wide circles on the bottom of the page. Castiel winced. “Oh.”

Leshawna giggled. “It gets better.”

“No doubt. One day he trapped a big, bad monster. A monster from another world.” The illustration on this page was a single black shadow with red orbs for eyes and two wings spanning from corner to corner. _Accurate,_ Castiel thought, and turned the page. There was rectangle there with the man from the first few pages drawn inside of it.

Castiel was better at putting up a good show these days. He kept the easy smile on his face even as he suddenly understood what the title meant by “drowning box.” 

“He locked himself up inside a box and drowned himself in the ocean.” He looked up at Leshawna, and this time a mild frown slipped over his features. “But he didn’t.”

She rolled her eyes expansively, exasperation traversing the entire room. “Cas-ti-el,” she said with the aggravated edge specially curated by young children. “It’s a story. Just read it! This is where it gets good.”

“The box sank down to the bottom of the ocean.” And, yes, there was the puzzle box stuck in what must be sand. Fish were drawn around it, as though exploring its edges curiously. “The monster inside hurt the man and brought him back to life every time he died.”

“It was the bottom of the ocean,” Leshawna interrupted earnestly. “So he died all the time.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” Leshawna turned to the next page for Castiel. 

In the corner of the room, Mary coughed loudly and the spine of her book creaked as she set it down against her leg. When Castiel met her eye, her look seemed to say, _This is why I said no kids at the bunker._ Castiel shrugged at her. As Dean had put it, hunting was a long term mission. The bunker was like a space ship in Star Trek - and families were just part of the deal now.

“But one day a pod of humpback whales-” Castiel broke off in surprise, then continued. “—Heard his screams.” A smiling humpback whale took up the whole page, one flipper held out as though in greeting. “The whales surrounded the box.” Just like the prior drawing, the box remained on the bottom of the ocean, jutting upward in an angle with a screaming Dean inside it. Instead of fish, there were now massive dark whale shapes curled around the box. “They decided to help the man. They used their sonar to vaporize the angel inside the box.”

The next page showed two long wing shadows stretching out across the brown line of sand depicting the ocean floor. The figure of Dean was no longer screaming. “The whales picked up the box and brought the man to the surface.” Bubbles of blue ink escaped from Dean’s lips as a whale nosed the box upward on the page. “The whales broke the box and the man was free.” Dean was drawn next as a panicked X, with arms and legs outstretched and head held just above choppy green waves. A wide, worried O broadcast his distress. Castiel turned the page, bracing himself for more drowning. Instead, the next page showed a whale with a little figure of a man riding on top of it. They were both waving at the reader. “The man rode back to shore on the back of a whale and they all lived happily ever after.” The last page of the story showed Dean standing on a massive boulder, high fiving a whale. “The end.”

Castiel set down the book, carefully smoothing the pages. “That’s quite a story. You— You did a very good job.”

Leshawna tossed her head. “I know,” she chirped. Her fingers made skittering motions towards the pages on the table. “You can keep it,” she said.

“Ah, thank you?” Castiel carefully closed the storybook and picked it up. 

“You’re welcome,” she said blithely, pulling another sheet towards her. The page was already illustrated with a picture of a crib holding a baby. A dark figure stood over it, eyes scribbled in gold marker. “I’ll give you more pages to add when I finish them.” Leshawna smiled and bent her head to the page. 

Castiel tilted his head in confusion and amusement, then pushed back from the table, recognizing the dismissal for what it was. “I— Thank you,” he said finally. “I look forward to reading them.”

** * * * **

That evening Castiel entered his and Dean’s shared bedroom late. He’d been working on a comparative spellbook project, trying to reconcile the differences between seventy-eight resurrection spells. Dean looked up as he entered and Castiel noticed with dismay that Dean was settled back against the headboard with Leshawna’s book in his hands. Dean had amassed more than his share of nightmare fuel, but these days he frequently woke up gulping air like it was water cutting into his lungs instead. Some scars were mental, some physical. Michael’s possession had left both behind in Dean’s mind. The memory of drowning was a hard thing for Dean to shake. 

“We have a budding author in our midst,” Castiel said after a pause. He quietly closed the door and crossed the room to the bed.

Dean tossed the book to his desktop and chuckled. “Yeah, I can see that. Whales, huh?”

“Humpback whales,” Castiel confirmed. “A heretofore unknown feature of the species - the ability to obliterate archangels.”

“Shoulda tried that.” Dean tugged Castiel down to sit next to him, arm looping around his waist. He let Castiel pull away for a moment, and Castiel bent to remove his shoes. “I would’ve liked to ride on a whale.”

“Really?” Castiel laughed and let himself be drawn back against the headboard, pulled into Dean’s embrace. “I thought you said all sea journeys were, and I quote, ‘crazy suicide missions.’”

“It’s a whale, Cas.” Dean nuzzled at Castiel’s collar. “Whales always get a pass.”

“I should have known.” Castiel wriggled against Dean’s arm, snaking his own around Dean’s shoulder with a lack of grace he’d long since accepted as part of the indignity of snuggling. Then, satisfied, he brought his other hand across his lap and brought it to rest against Dean’s thigh. He curved his fingers along the muscle there, bringing his fingertips across Dean’s warmth until his knuckles rested against Dean’s opposite leg. “I once possessed a whale.”

Dean’s laugh was sharp and bright, startled out of him. “No shit?” He pulled away a little bit so he could look Castiel in the eye. “You fucking with me?”

“No shit. An actual whale.” Castiel hummed and began to gently massage Dean’s leg. “They’re quite intelligent and capable of consenting to an angel. It’s very difficult to wield an angel blade, however. I found it rather impractical.” He increased the pressure of his fingertips. 

“You tryin’ to give me a whale kink?” Dean let his legs fall open a little, and his breathing grew deeper. More pointed. 

Castiel laughed. “Whatever works for you.” He lowered his mouth to Dean’s and claimed him in a gentle kiss. “I was a massive whale, you know. A sp—” Dean sputtered against his lips. “But that’s not important. This is important.” He slid his hand upwards and let the night fade into easy bliss. 

Much later, Castiel held Dean as he flinched his way through bad dreams. He wondered if he dreamed of the box - of being sealed inside it. The absolute silence. The cold of it. If Dean was dreaming of it, it was mild enough this time to not wake him instantly. Castiel sighed and pressed his lips to the thin drops of sweat gathering on Dean’s brow. He’d spent years now on Earth, trying to puzzle out the function of nightmares. What could possibly be the advantage of torturing oneself at night, often when the brain would not retain even an echo of catharsis in the morning? Perhaps they were a little like stories - or stories were a little like dreams. Little bubbles of catharsis, or pockets of pain to slip into and out of at will.

In his sleep, Dean choked on a sob. Then another. His breathing grew shallow and pained. Castiel hesitated for a moment. Then, a scene formed in his mind and he passed it along to Dean with the gentle stroke of a finger against his temple. Immediately, Dean’s distressed sounds began to ease. He sighed, and the room once again fell into silence as he accepted the suggested images.

Castiel settled his arm across Dean like an anchor and closed his eyes with a satisfied sigh of his own. Skimming along the surface of Dean’s mind, light and inconsequential as a breeze over the ocean, Dean dreamed of sailing the seas astride a whale. In his dream, he whooped into the whipping wind and the salt spray. In his dream, he was free. 

**Author's Note:**

> I am clearly the child in this story. Would you like to hear a tale about Dean drowning over and over again for eternity?
> 
> ....No?
> 
> Oh, fine. Have some whales. I like whales. 
> 
> Thanks for reading! I'm on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/whichstiel) and [Tumblr](http://whichstiel.tumblr.com/) @ whichstiel. You may also like the Supernatural recap and gif blog I co-write/curate, [Shirtless Sammy](https://shirtlesssammy.tumblr.com/).


End file.
